NYOB

Dear Government,

What happens in my body is my business.

You didn’t make my body your business when I was molested as a child, raped as a teenager, or sex trafficked as a young adult.

You didn’t notice when I struggled to access birth control due to poverty.

You didn’t mind when I was trapped in toxic relationships with misogynistic, manipulative men who drove me to contemplate suicide.

You didn’t pay a dime when I asked my health insurance to cover the care I needed.

In part thanks to the abortions obtained through no help from you, I am a physician now.

You devour the tax money I earn with my blood, sweat, and tears. You are undeserving of my sacrifices.

You need to back off.

What I do with my body is none of your business.

You didn’t care about my body before, don’t pretend to care now.

My body knows the truth.

But truth, like freedom, equality, or justice, isn’t your business.

A Tale of Two Titties

My tits used to be ornamental, fruit of my tree

Now they serve a purpose greater than me

I breastfeed my baby night and day

Engorged and heavy, my tits now sway

Leaky Lefty has an easy flow

Old Faithful, the right breast, is steady and slow

Faithful humbly carried the load when Lefty was out of commission due to a painful combination of mastitis and a blocked milk duct

My breasts lost their perkiness and youthful appeal long ago

Before the rise of services such as Only Fans, for which they could have raked in riches, I’m told

I’ve worked a lot harder for a lot lower wages

Putting aside all rampages, I bow my head in gratitude for my body, my baby, and my reproductive freedom

Reality

You’re creeping on my heart

Changing my reality

When did you start moving in

Did you ask me

When will you pick up after yourself

You’re changing my reality

Fast-forward a year or two

I’ve grown to accept you

I’d still like you to clean up your mess

You’ve changed my reality

I care about you as a person, and how you treat me as a person

I don’t mind your broke down truck or your empty wallet

We are rich in love

We are supported by a foundation of spiritual love

Thank you for changing my reality

Hold Her

Treat your woman right

Hold her day and night

She is fire, she is earth

She holds power under her skirt

She is lava, she is water

She is your mother, she is your daughter

She is fire, she is earth

She holds power under her skirt

Treat your woman right

All day and all night

She is fire, she is ice

She is everything that’s nice

Like the earth she is made of clay

She can sculpt her life her way

Brothers and sisters, misses and misters

Treat women right

Don’t start a fight

If you do, that’s on you

Don’t say I didn’t warn you

She is fire, she is earth

She holds power under her skirt

You’ve got to learn how to treat a woman right

Hold her tenderly all night

Sleep Talking

Long ago and far away

On a bus grinding through the night

The air thick with sweat and grime

All we had was time

Beer and ice cream on my lips

Bitterness and liquor on his

The man next to me said that I was afraid of talking in my sleep

He overstepped the boundary that I failed to establish between us

Sometimes when I wake up alone, I wonder if my lover heard me sleep-talking and left me to wallow in my past

I want to tell him the truth about my life, but I fear that he would stop loving me,

or worse- rehash it endless times and tell his religious family who would judge me as a hell-bound, lying, baby-killing whore

They’d be right, in a sense

I have exchanged sex for money and I’ve had 3 abortions, each one horrible in its own way, but not as bad as being stuck in an abusive, disempowering situation

Judge not, motherfuckers

I don’t want any man to judge the decisions I’ve made about my body

Least of all a man who is financially dependent on my career: a profession which swallowed my fetuses whole

My past is nobody’s business but my own

I don’t want to be given a hard time for the hard times I’ve already been through

I’m trying to heal and move on

I’m trying to meet myself with compassion for the trauma I’ve endured

I am strong and tough and vulnerable and delicate

My dark secrets are at once more innocent and scandalous than my jealous partners imagine

I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore so I stopped being pregnant

You weren’t supporting me by being broke and leaving me shamefully unmarried

I didn’t want to spend the weekend with you so I didn’t

I regret the weekend away because the other men treated me both better and worse than you, but I love you- painfully clear now that the hormonal storm of pregnancy has simmered down

Why do I set myself up for drama and disaster? I’m trying to heal but your rehashing of the past dredges up emotional detritus, dragging me back

My old stress addiction dies hard

I clamp my jaw

My teeth grind like a bus in the night

I pray that I didn’t sleep talk last night

You Can Have It

Darling, though we’ve never met

You rolled the dice, you placed a bet

That you could win a lawsuit

Born of the heartbreaking news

That your baby died inside you

A horrific experience, true

But of your baby’s death, I had nothing to do

The coroner’s report reveals the truth

Your baby passed away at least a day before you ever walked my way

Darling, I didn’t even lay eyes upon you

I was being a team player, not a baby slayer

In going above and beyond to help another

I didn’t imagine I’d be sued by a mother

You said we dropped the ball

But we were never playing at all

If it is money you are looking for,

Honey you’re knocking on the wrong door

All those years I could have been earning

I spent in medical school learning

about medicine, not about law

Perhaps I wasn’t well trained after all

You want us to take the blame

for your unspeakable pain

Can you imagine what I have given up

just to help you, is it never enough?

For you, I went hungry, I went without sleep

Hard years away from my family, I didn’t see

I got stuck with needles, splashed with blood

Only for you to smear my name like it was mud

On the journey that led me to you,

I gave up love, I gave my life

I turned away from ease and took on strife

Of my own pregnancies, I sacrificed them all

My weeping uterus bled raw

Just to give you my best, I gave up the rest-

My youth, my babies and childbearing years, too many unnumbered tears

I stayed in an abusive relationship throughout medical school

Because the only way to escape my abuser would have been to drop out and forego my education

I stayed in hell for all the women held back from their full potential because of men

Though it was the hardest thing I ever did, and I still have nightmares about him

I don’t feel safe in my skin, but then again I never did

I wonder if I’d do it all again, just to reach out my hand, only to have you bite it

I fought hard to serve you, and serve you I did

Without a word of thanks from you, kid

Then again, we’ve never met

I’m named in your lawsuit, yet

What I’m trying to tell you

Is that my medical degree,

My heart, my mind

My hard work, and all my precious time-

You can have it

It was always yours anyway

Everything I do, dear patient, is for you

I give you my life- you can have my lawsuit too

In trying to hurt me, you only harm yourself

We are all connected in the One True Self

Limitlessness is bliss

Reach out and return the infinite kiss

Available to you at any time

You can have it if you understand this rhyme

Safe Space

I currently work in a high-pressure, male-dominated profession
This old school boys club is rough and tumble
Giant egos clash and bash one another
I try to stay below the fray
But they smash me anyway
They don’t care who they hurt
As long as they puff themselves up bigger and louder than all within earshot of their tantrum

I don’t buy into their bullshit
I want to pop their over-inflated egos with my sharp sewing needle
But I keep quiet, for my own safety and sanity
I’ve learned to keep my head down and keep moving forward,
Because I have better things to do than try to teach grown men how to act
They don’t know how to act and I’m not their mama

Despite my best efforts to keep calm, I get stressed out

when my narcissistic, masculine bosses maliciously razz me
They are too afraid to admit that they are afraid
They are too blinded by their vanity to see that fear is the motivator
Behind the furious spinning of their transparent webs of false perfection                                                  The only prey they catch is themselves
I used to be a black widow spider, I know their game
At least I know that I am afraid of imperfection, I don’t play

I also know that I will never be perfect, and I accept that as part of being human

Who are we fooling when we try to act like we are anything other than human?

What brings me peace in the midst of the psychological violence of the workday
Is that no matter how tense and dramatic the guys act, as long as we are at work
I will never have to see them naked, nor will they get to watch me undress
I will never have to please them sexually, talk dirty, or stick their dick in me anywhere

They do not know that I know what they want behind closed doors
They’d never suspect that I am a former sex-worker
Remembering my whore-rrific past soothes me in the pressure cooker of my present job

No matter how bad it gets, it can’t get worse than what I’ve already been through, right?

Special message of respect for the current working girls: I love you and feel a kinship to you stronger than I will ever feel for the over-privileged pricks who are my co-workers now. No matter how far up the career ladder I climb, I will always be by your side as your sister in heart and soul.

With a prayer for serenity and safety to all.

Bi-Curiouser and Curiouser

I feel bi-curiouser and curiouser
Is it because of my genes that my eyes follow the curves of ladies’ jeans?
Is it because I was molested by my mother that women intrigue me?
Or is it because I suffered so many violations by men when I was younger
That I became a commercial sex worker just to profit from my skills
And now have fear and rage toward Y chromosome carriers,
That I fantasize about women more and more?

Women are beautiful
Visualizing their bodies near me,
I erupt in earth-moving orgasms

I am more bi-curious every day

To the point that bi is no longer a question- is the answer to why being with a man never felt quite right and at night I dream of they and I, the invitation of their thighs

I want to read you cover to cover, my bi-curious lover

Their eyes are bluer than any other.

Our love is pure albeit undercover.

They are not she or he

They are we

Dance with the Devil

I’ve met the Devil plenty of times
He’s a man with a drink in his hand, asking for mine
He’ll buy me a drink and drop a few dimes
But in the end, he’s just another waste of my time

I’ve seen the Devil at close range
I feel his eyes on me; he looks at me strange
When I hesitate to perform his every wish
(Whether or not I know what his wish is)

At first I make him happier than he’s ever felt before
Until I leave his heart panting on the floor
I survive with him til I remember how much I’d thrive without him

Like anesthesia, my amnesia wears off eventually

And when it does it’s like I wake up in the middle of surgery

Open heart in a bloody mess, I struggle to pick myself up and get dressed

Headed for the horizon, under duress, yet determined and strong, I sing my single song

Until I meet my sacred Devil again

And he gives me another chance to burn, another opportunity to learn

How many times must I learn how to get out of a toxic relationship?

Please, let this be the last time

The key lies in prevention, so I laid down a one simple rule:

Never be alone with a man behind closed doors, especially when alcohol is involved

The Devil likes to dance naked with me
His dick points at me like a compass needle
And I’m due-North, though I’d like to head South
His dick feels like a poison mushroom in my mouth
I want to spit it out, and shout:

Devil be gone- we’ve been dancing too long!
My feet hurt and they’re caked with dirt
Haven’t we made each other suffer enough?
Surely, your attachment to me feels rough
When I rip myself away

I’ve ripped myself away from the Devil
Plenty and plenty of times
I hope that I can quit him for life
You are my witness by reading this rhyme

Worse Things

Sometimes when I drink alone-
One cold beer on a hot summer’s night,
At the end of a long day,
to wash lingering anxiety away
I wonder if I am an alcoholic
But then I think
There are worse things to be

Like those who destroy the earth
To feed their insatiable greed

Like pedophiles and rapists
Serial killers
Users and abusers of women and children

The dramatic and manipulative
Who are unnecessarily cruel to their loved ones

Those who blame everyone but themselves for their own egregious behavior
Instead of looking within

The judgemental and cold-hearted
Who raise their voice when they should be listening